Sasha Said A hearty blend of feminist insights, cultural commentary, political rants, and social justice advocacy.

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever written. And if I saw any other way out, there’s no way I’d be sitting here and writing this. Asking for help has always been very difficult for me, and if it was just about me, I probably wouldn’t be doing this. However, I have my dogs to think about. They depend on me and I’m trying real hard not to let them down. So here goes…

After barely making ends meet for a number of years, my partner and I are now in a position where we are facing homelessness. We usually manage to eke out a living selling our skills as freelancers, but during the last few months, work has completely evaporated. We spend all our time searching for jobs, but nothing has panned out.

We have also looked for work outside our field, but since we’re stuck in the boonies without a car, our employment opportunities are severely limited. Nonetheless, in an effort to leave no stone unturned, my partner did put in applications for two local just-above-minimum-wage jobs. Given that he has no experience in these lines of work and competition for any kind of job is beyond fierce around here, this is a long shot. Moreover, even if they do hire him, he wouldn’t get paid enough money fast enough to avoid eviction.
As regular readers of this blog are aware, I live with PTSD and bipolar disorder, which is challenging even when things are going reasonably well. Stress makes my symptoms worse, and not knowing how we’ll survive this situation has been extremely stressful. Consequently these last few months have been very rough in terms of my mental health. I’ve also had to reduce the dosage of my bipolar meds because we can’t afford to buy more, and I’m trying to make what I’ve got last as long as possible. Obviously that’s far from ideal.

My beautiful Balou

On top of everything else, I’ve been dealing with a seriously ill dog. My beloved Balou has been diagnosed with cancer. The diagnosis set us back a couple of hundred dollars, and we have no money to treat him!

I saved Balou’s life almost twelve years ago when I rescued him from a kill shelter in the middle of a distemper outbreak, and he’s returned the favor many times over. He’s the most remarkable dog I’ve ever known, and he’s always been there for me. It breaks my heart not to be able to help him now that he’s sick and needs me.

Balou is our oldest, but we have three other dogs–Laney, Goldie, and Kimo. All are rescues that arrived in various ways over the years. They’ve kept me going many times when I thought I couldn’t go on, and they’re the reason I’m writing this.

Here’s our situation: We can’t pay our rent or our utilities, and we only have enough food money for the next nine days. We have no money for my meds or Balou’s treatment. We got this far with the help of friends and family, but everyone we know is also poor, and while they would like to help, they’ve done all they can without jeopardizing their own survival.

If it was just me and my partner, we might be able to go to a shelter, but with the dogs, that isn’t an option. Nor can we live in our car, since we have no car.

If we lose our home, I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do. There’s literally nowhere we can go with our dogs. And I would never, under any circumstances, abandon our canine family members.

That’s why I’m turning to you. If you’re able and willing to help, I can’t even begin to tell you how much that would mean to us. Any and all donations are beyond welcome! If you’re not in a position to help financially, please use the share buttons below to link to this post on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Mentioning our situation on your blog would also be much appreciated. Oh, and if you would like to hire us for a job, you can contact me at SashaSaidX at gmail.com.

I’m desperately hoping that we can scrape together enough cash to stay in our home and pay our bills. Whatever you can do to help, please do it! Again, I wouldn’t ask if I saw any other way, but I’m terrified of what’s going to happen to all of us if we lose our home.

UPDATE (01/20): First of, I want to give a huge “thank you” to everyone who donated, blogged and tweeted about our situation so far. I realize most of you aren’t exactly swimming in cash either, and I want you to know how much your help means to me. You’re awesome!

At this point, we’ve got a little over one-third of the rent payment, which unfortunately means we still got a ways to go. We’re prioritizing rent over everything else, including food, because, quite frankly, losing our home = game over. Even if we somehow managed to survive sleeping outdoors (which, given various predators and the nighttime temperatures this time of year, is iffy at best), we have no way to earn a living and get back on our feet without a computer and Internet connection. Never mind that finding another rental with four dogs, an eviction, and no car would be pretty much impossible…

First of, I want to give a huge “thank you” to everyone who donated, blogged and tweeted about our situation so far. I realize most of you aren’t exactly swimming in cash either, and I want you to know how much your help means to me. You’re awesome!

At this point, we’ve got a little over one-third of the rent payment, which unfortunately means we still got a ways to go. We’re prioritizing rent over everything else, including food, because, quite frankly, losing our home = game over. Even if we somehow managed to survive sleeping outdoors (which, given various predators and the nighttime temperatures this time of year, is iffy at best), we have no way to earn a living and get back on our feet without a computer and Internet connection. Never mind that finding another rental with four dogs, an eviction, and no car would be pretty much impossible…

Hey, can I drop ship you a package of food? I send out boxes to the troops but I can send you some basics, pleae let me know about alergies. Also, are you former military(PTSD)? Many bases have food patries and Soldiers Angels can hep you also if you are.

There are good treatments for PTSD, actually. Some resources are at the websites of the Sidran Foundation, ISST-D, the Trauma Center; click through the bloglink below. Hope things change soon for the better.

I’m sorry I cannot help with funds. I can suggest, however, that if you have books you can decide which you can part with and post to amazon. I’ve had good response doing that. Not a big source, but a little extra is always helpful. Goodwill to you and yours.

I am still saddled with leftover books from my Internet book business and am trying to flog some of them off on eBay so I can help Sasha. I haven’t sold on Amazon. I do have a good seller rating on eBay though. And these books are just taking up space.

My experience has been that most books’ values crash quickly. However I have also noted that people who shop their books on Amazon tend to run high-end because Amazon is so high profile for books. I used to get orders from a guy who would advertise scarce titles other dealers were offering on more low profile sites, and then arrange to have them drop shipped by the owner of the book, when he received an order.

He marked stuff up hugely. Weird business model and a little creepy. But it says something about Amazon.

Isn’t he beautiful? And such a good friend to Sasha too, all these years.

We all gotta go sometime, but hopefully all of our assistance will allow her to make his ultimate transition as easy as possible, not to mention the possibility of prolonging his life more than might be otherwise expected. Sasha says he is still very active and with a good appetite and very strong. These are good signs. Hopefully he will be able to ward off the cancer for a few more years.

LOL. It’s always nice to get “good advice” from the privileged and clueless. All the homeless people in the streets, the families living in their cars, the kids going to bed hungry, the animals abandoned because their people lost their homes, the tens of thousands dying every year from treatable conditions because they were unable to access medical care in this “great country” until it was an emergency and at that point it was too late–I guess all those people just didn’t know about those amazing community resources available to them.

Newsflash: In so far as such resources exist (and good luck trying to find local help in a rural area such as ours), they are stretched beyond capacity. Due to the state of the economy and the class warfare the mega rich have been waging on the rest of us for decades, the number of people desperately needing help is far greater than the available resources.

By the way, we had another power outage tonight. This is a fairly regular occurrence around here. You know why? Crumbling infrastructure. And I won’t even get into the condition of the roads and bridges. This “great country” is literally falling apart. We’re rapidly becoming a “third world” country where a small number of super wealthy people own almost everything–including our elected representatives–and everyone else is struggling to survive.

Last winter much of New Mexico and Texas lost power during that week in early February when it was so unusually cold. There were power outages all over the place. But also the compressors on the gas lines from Texas lost power in some cases, and the gas co. had to shut down parts of the system to keep pressure in the rest of it. That meant they had to go around and start up every household manually when the power was restored.

No backup generators for these compressors on main gas transmission lines. Some folks were without gas for a week, plus sometimes days of electrical outages. Some folks didn’t have fireplaces or wood stoves or propane or back-up generators. Some folks could not get their cars to start.

All this in temps down to zero degrees F. or lower at night.

Meanwhile CEO’s are still raking in record-breaking salaries and bonuses.

. As one of those who live in a different country, not yet brought to it’s knees by massive corruption and deceit, (although that doesn’t stop them from trying), ….We live in the country, have dogs, (and donkeys) and just about manage to scrape by, but, I can still send out a small amounts from that which I earn. It’s not much, but you need it more than I do. So many needy, so little cash…….
Good luck.

writing to you from the UK, here we seem to be hot on the heels of America in terms of poverty, i myself am about to go homeless, for the second
time in 4 months, i also have pets , and i am heartbroken because i know that this time i wont be able to spring back, ive always worked , unemployment is very high now, little or no chance of work, i left my last job due to illness, there is a greedy goverment operation on at the moment to deny and disallow the sick the any sickness benefits, money that is taken from earnings and put in the “goverment pot “.
i am months behind in my rent, barely enough money to feed my pets never mind myself.
Benefits are constantly cut off with little or no warning, taking weeks to sort back out again, another way they take money from the poor.
Meantime honest people are being handed eviction notices.